Chapter 1206: Chapter 456: Scheming to the End? Pure Coincidence!
Although Qin Miao was not part of Mercedes’ decision-making level, this matter didn’t involve Mercedes’ interests at all; you could even say it was closely related to the life and safety of every driver.
So, faced with Qin Miao’s request, Mercedes had no reason to refuse. Once they understood the situation and saw how insistent Qin Miao was, the team never even thought about turning him down.
Originally, the only team putting pressure on the FIA and lodging a protest over this incident was the small Red Bull team that Gasly drove for.
The FIA had planned to just cool this down and ignore it; after all, who hasn’t made a mistake or two?
But Mercedes jumping in suddenly left the FIA scratching their heads.
The FIA just couldn’t figure it out: this has nothing to do with you, Mercedes, so why the hell are you butting in?
If it had only been the small Red Bull team protesting this, the FIA would probably have just pressed the whole thing down, everyone pretending nothing had happened, the show goes on, the dance goes on, acting like they knew nothing.
But once Mercedes forcefully stepped into this matter, the FIA knew they had to show some attitude and give an explanation, or with Mercedes’ current influence in Asia, the FIA would soon be torn apart by the fans.
The FIA understood they had to handle this, but they couldn’t immediately announce any penalties in a short time, since the race wasn’t over yet.
After the staff member responsible for liaison on Mercedes’ side received the FIA’s reply, he went to find Qin Miao.
"Qin Miao, the FIA says they’ll give a decision after the race is over."
After getting this news, Qin Miao nodded with a smile and said, "Okay, got it, thanks."
"You’re welcome, this is just my job." The other man smiled, nodded, and then left.
After he walked away, Barber asked Qin Miao curiously, "Why are you suddenly so concerned about what happened to Gasly? It’s not like you two are that close, right?"
Qin Miao smiled and looked at Barber. "If I said it’s because I’m too free and have nothing to do, would you believe it?"
Barber shook his head. "No way. You were obviously really into that game just now."
Qin Miao shrugged. It had been a long time; inside the team he wasn’t constantly watching his own behavior, and even if he did something a bit out of line, the staff would tolerate it. That was the privilege of a genius.
Because of that, Barber had basically figured out what kind of person he was, so Qin Miao wasn’t surprised.
But Qin Miao still refused to admit it and said, "It really is just that I’m bored and have nothing better to do, plus a bit of personal emotion. After all, Gasly counts as a gaming buddy who’s played with me. If something really happened to him, I’d be down one person to play games with, wouldn’t I?
Besides, this time the Suzuka Circuit officials and the FIA are clearly in the wrong first. I may not have personally experienced Bianqi’s track accident, but I don’t want that kind of incident to be replayed on track.
Judging from what just happened, these Japanese guys haven’t learned a damn thing from the lesson paid for with Bianqi’s life."
"Okay, okay, calm down. But you did convince me," Barber shrugged.
...
After this little episode, the inside of the Mercedes garage returned to calm.
Because the rain on track still showed no sign of easing, and the duration of this rain was far off from the team’s predicted hour and a half. In the end, it rained the whole day, but only after two hours did track conditions clearly start to improve.
And an F1 race has a maximum time limit.
If the race is interrupted due to the safety car or other reasons, and the suspension lasts long enough to hit a certain time limit, then the remaining laps won’t be run; instead, the race switches to an end-of-race countdown.
After waiting under the red flag for nearly an hour, a race end countdown appeared on the trackside big screen in front of Qin Miao.
Meaning, if the countdown ended and the race still hadn’t restarted, then today’s race would be directly cancelled.
Qin Miao watched the countdown on the screen tick down from an hour and a half to one hour.
When the time hit one hour, the FIA finally lifted the red flag, indicating that the race would start again in ten minutes.
And this time, the restart would not use a standing start, but a rolling start.
The main consideration was that track conditions were still not ideal, and this was the FIA’s way of avoiding any more incidents at the start.
The other teams had no objections to this.
Since the race was about to restart, all the team staff on site naturally shifted their attention back to the track.
Qin Miao handed his Steam Deck to Barber, then hurriedly put on his race suit and jogged over to his car.
Once Qin Miao put on his helmet and sat in the car, Frankie walked over from the Mercedes pit wall through the rain to stand by his car.
Qin Miao was in the middle of putting on his gloves when he suddenly noticed a figure appear on his left. He glanced over and realized it was Frankie.
Logically speaking, the place Frankie should be right now was the team’s pit wall, since a lot of the telemetry data from Qin Miao’s car needed him to monitor and process.
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